Andover’s Mathematics and English departments are offering a selection of new term-contained courses for this upcoming spring. David Fox, Instructor in English, will offer his new elective, Cinema Symbiosis, which was introduced in previous years, but not offered in 2010. For the course, students will watch movies and offer their analysis of them. Fox purposely chose movies that he believed students had no previous exposure to. “The reason I don’t choose modern movies to watch is because I want to show the students movies that they wouldn’t be tempted to go out and watch on their own. The students would be more likely to watch Lord of the Rings on their own so I wouldn’t want to show them something they had already seen,” said Fox. “Lots of the films we see are in black and white, some are silent and most of them are French and from other European countries,” he added. Fox created this course “because I like literature and I know about filming and like it, and this was not an offered course before so I decided to make it a course,” he said. Maria Litvin, Instructor in Math and Computer Science, will introduce Math 470/ Comp 470 in the spring term. Litvin explained that students will combine math and computer skills in order to create personal projects. “Students can basically do whatever they want in regards to projects. I set a couple of guidelines and then let them choose what they want to do,” said Litvin. “One student chose to do their project on the [body mass index] while another student chose to play 21 with the computer.” Litvin was inspired to create this elective because she believes that this course should be required. “The world is becoming more and more technological and it would help people to have at least a small knowledge of computers.” Each department has varying standards for what an elective constitutes. John Rogers, Dean of Studies, said, “For students beyond Math 340, for example, all math courses are electives. A course like Chem 550 may serve as a diploma requirement for some students and an elective for others. It all depends on how much science a student has taken prior to the course.” Rogers said that in order for an elective to be created, another class must be eliminated. “With roughly 1100 students typically taking five and sometimes six courses each, there are only so many courses that can be filled with students. Typically, we will have around 460 sections total on offer,” he added.
